A weather-tracking project three-years in refinement
could improve the warnings given to West Coast residents often in harm's way from
vicious Pacific storms.

The
Pacific Landfalling Jets Experiment, PACJET, will spring board off findings
from earlier Pacific storm studies to address rainfall and wind forecasts out
to 24 hours in California, Oregon and Washington.

It
builds on experience gained from the California Land-Falling Jets Experiment,
CALJET, an earlier west coast study conducted during the strong El Niņo of 1997-98.

PACJET expands the area covered by CALJET and targets the
populated coastal zone, which is an area of extreme vulnerability for which
forecasts are typically less accurate than normal, a problem of great interest
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 1998, CALJET scientists predicted the effects
of a storm hours before it slammed the shore. After a three-year break to analyze
data and refine research methods, the program resumed under the new name this
week with a demonstration Tuesday at its base in Monterey, Calif.

To track the earlier storm, the National Weather Service borrowed a few pages
from its tropical storm notebook and a plane from its hurricane-hunting fleet.

Its goal, shared by PACJET, is to gain further insight into how a low-level
jet, or current, of fast-moving air at 3,000 feet feeds a storm's energy onto
the coast.

The improved tracking led to alarms sounding well before the storm and its
attendant jet roared onto northern California's Monterey Peninsula.

''The additional data from the aircraft in the storm offshore helped a forecaster
decide to issue a flash-flood warning that gave six hours lead time for flash
flooding in the region around Santa Cruz,'' PACJET's lead researcher Marty Ralph
of NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said. ''It
was a record-breaking flood.''

Pacific disturbances form and grow over areas of the ocean largely unmonitored
by weather sensors. While they can be tracked by satellites and weather radar,
the speed of their winds just above the earth's surface and their moisture content
are hard to assess.

Under PACJET, funded by $2 million from NOAA, a WP-3D Orion plane will make
20 flights between now and March 4 from its base in Monterey.

The project will begin tracking storms as far as 620 miles out to sea and ranging
from Southern California to Washington state.

Using a new satellite communications link, the four engine turboprop P-3 aircraft
will be able to communicate with forecasters on the ground in real-time, enabling
researchers to send forecasters radar images, audio transmissions, and other
information from the plane. In addition, there will be ground-based instruments
measuring wind and water vapor, and a new GOES satellite to scan cloud motion
and determine winds.

While California is far more notorious for its earthquakes than its storms,
Ralph said that over the past three decades the average annual toll has been
about 10 deaths and just under $1 billion in damage.

National Weather Service Western Region Director Vickie Nadolski says PACJET
will be invaluable to West Coast forecasters. "This experiment will be
a great help to us to better understand the influence of the low level jet and
the ocean on landfalling Pacific storms.

Researchers say the project, a collaborative effort between NOAA, the U.S.
Navy and other government and university entities, could benefit more than just
the West Coast, because Pacific storms often push east and develop into the
next Midwest blizzard.

''What's going on out there doesn't just impact the West Coast. It has an impact
for much of the country, '' said Greg Forbes, an expert on severe storms at
The Weather Channel.

Tom Maruyama, who heads the Office of Emergency Services in flood-prone San
Mateo County, said PACJET could save lives.

Because of the improved tracking during the 1998 storm, search and rescue crews
were in position to save an estimated 129 people from flooding and mudslides.
One man died when a tree fell on his house.

''We believe that because of (the) heads-up we were able to rescue that number
of people,'' Maruyama said. ''This is the first time we were able to take scientific
data and bring it down to the emergency response level.''